The Power of the Chair:
Formal Leadership in International Cooperation
Jonas Tallberg
Associate Professor, Stockholm University
[email protected]
This paper explores when, why, and how the chairmanship of international negotiation bodies
allows the incumbent to influence bargaining outcomes – an area that so far has received limited
systematic attention in scholarship on international cooperation. I present a theory of formal
leadership that develops a rationalist argument for the delegation of authority to the
chairmanship, the power resources of negotiation chairs, and the influence of formal leaders over
outcomes. I test this theory in the context of European Union (EU) negotiations, summarizing the
results of a book-length study. The historical evidence shows that the powers of the rotating EU
Presidency have evolved in response to functional demands in European cooperation.
Furthermore, carefully selected case studies demonstrate that the Presidency constitutes a power
platform in EU politics, permitting governments at the helm to influence both the efficiency and
the distributional implications of negotiations. Finally, I review the experiences of formal
leadership in negotiations on trade, security, and the environment, establishing that the influence
of negotiation chairs in the EU is not an isolated occurrence, but the expression of a general
phenomenon in world politics. I conclude the paper by outlining its implications for ongoing
debates on international cooperation, and by charting a course of further research on formal
leadership.
Paper prepared for the Third Pan-European Conference on EU Politics,
Istanbul, 21-23 September 2006
Multilateral negotiations have become the most prominent method by which states address joint
problems, resolve disagreements, and formulate common norms in world politics. Over the last
two decades, this development has spurred a substantive body of research on international
negotiations in a broad range of issue areas. 1 At the heart of the debate are fundamental issues of
efficiency and distribution. Why do some negotiations lead to agreements that exploit all possible
joint gains, whereas others collapse or produce sub-optimal bargains? Why are some parties
more successful than others in securing benefits from multilateral agreements?
This paper addresses a phenomenon that so far has received limited systematic attention by
IR theorists, yet carries important implications for our understanding of multilateral bargaining –
the power of the chair. 2 I explore the influence wielded by the formal leaders of international
cooperation – those state or supranational representatives that chair and direct negotiations in the
major decision bodies of international organizations and conferences. I argue in favor of the
chairmanship as a power platform in international cooperation, and find that actors in control of
this office enjoy unique opportunities to shape the outcomes of multilateral negotiations. Formal
leaders fulfill functions of agenda management, brokerage, and representation that make it more
likely for negotiations to succeed, and possess privileged resources that enable them to steer
negotiations toward the agreements they most prefer.
The argument is laid out in four steps. First, I review the existing literature and position my
argument in relation to two influential, competing perspectives on leadership, efficiency, and
distribution in international cooperation. Whereas the first perspective claims that international
bargaining involves low transaction costs and therefore a limited demand for leadership, the
second perspective considers informal leadership to be a necessary condition for successful
1
See, e.g., Winham 1979; Touval 1989; Young 1991; Evans, Jacobson, and Putnam 1993; Zartman 1994b;
Hampson with Hart 1995; Moravcsik 1998; Kremenyuk 2002. For a recent overview, see Jönsson 2002.
2
For exceptions, see Lang 1989; Metcalfe 1998; Odell 2005.
2
multilateral bargaining. Neither perspective, I claim, is capable of explaining when, why, and
how formal leadership matters in international cooperation.
Second, I present a theory of formal leadership informed by rational choice
institutionalism. The theory explains the delegation of process powers to the chairmanship as a
functional response by states to collective-action problems in multilateral bargaining. It identifies
asymmetrical access to preference information and asymmetrical control over negotiation
procedure as the central power resources of formal leaders. It suggests that opportunistic chairs
will use these privileged resources for both collective and private gain, promoting the one
agreement – among a range of efficient outcomes – that is closest to their own preferred position.
Third, I test the explanatory power of this theory in the context of European Union (EU)
negotiations, summarizing the results of book-length study. The evidence shows that the powers
of the rotating EU Presidency historically have evolved in response to functional pressures in
European cooperation and a continuous search by member governments for efficient forms of
intergovernmental decision-making. On the basis of six carefully selected case studies, I further
demonstrate that the Presidency constitutes a power platform in EU bargaining, permitting
governments at the helm to exert distributional influence over negotiated outcomes.
Fourth and finally, I confront the question of whether the European experience is unique or
not, by considering comparative evidence from regime negotiations on security, trade, and the
environment. More specifically, I review the experiences from three institutional settings with
variation in the organizational design of the chairmanship: the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) and its successor, the Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe (OSCE); the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the
World Trade Organization (WTO); and multilateral environmental conferences within the ambit
of the United Nations (UN). The comparative record suggests that the influence of the Presidency
3
in EU negotiations is not an isolated occurrence, but the expression of a general phenomenon in
world politics.
I conclude the paper by isolating its implications for ongoing debates on international
cooperation. More specifically, I claim that it (1) challenges existing conceptions of leadership in
multilateral bargaining, by specifying the merits of formal – as opposed to informal – leadership;
(2) lends support to an intergovernmentalist interpretation of European integration, by identifying
the primary institutional mechanism though which EU governments reach efficient agreements
without supranational mediation; and (3) opens up a new agenda of research on formal
leadership, offering empirical exploration and theoretical contestation.
The Debate: Leadership, Efficiency, and Distribution
Are states capable of negotiating efficient multilateral agreements by themselves, or are they
dependent on the help of political leaders or entrepreneurs for the furthering of international
cooperation? Existing research presents us with two competing approaches, which I here refer to
as the efficient negotiation perspective and the informal leadership perspective. These
approaches create counter-expectations about the efficiency of negotiations, the demand for
leadership, and the distribution of gains from international cooperation. They inform analyses of
multilateral negotiations in areas such as trade, environmental regulation, and regional
integration. In this section, I present the core propositions of these two perspectives, and explain
why neither approach adequately addresses the influence of formal leaders in international
cooperation.
4
According to the first perspective, multilateral negotiations are naturally efficient and
interventions from political entrepreneurs are likely to be either futile or redundant. 3 This
perspective is grounded in game-theoretical models of decentralized bargaining. 4 Bargaining and
decision-making involve no or low transaction costs, and may be seen as taking place on a
friction-less spot market. States possess sufficient information about each other’s preferences to
identify mutually beneficial agreements, and face no shortage of ideas or focal points around
which specific agreements can be constructed. “The information and ideas required for efficient
bargaining are plentiful and cheap. The range of potential agreements, national preferences, and
institutional options can thus be assumed to be common knowledge among governments.” 5 By
consequence, states rarely fail to reap the full benefits of cooperation because of impediments in
the bargaining process. Instead, the central analytical concern of this perspective is the
distribution of gains between the parties. More specifically, it suggests that the distribution of
gains in decentralized negotiations will reflect the relative bargaining power of the parties, as
defined by the parties’ best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
This perspective on the efficiency and distributional implications of multilateral bargaining
translates into a skeptical position on the importance of leaders and entrepreneurs. If states are
capable of identifying efficient agreements themselves and transaction costs are low, there will
be little demand for political leadership, which will prove redundant when offered. Alternatively,
if the distribution of state preferences prevents a zone of agreement from materializing, the
efforts of leaders are bound to fail and thus futile. Since political leadership in neither case will
constitute a necessary or sufficient condition for agreement, there are few reasons to believe that
3
See, especially, Moravcsik 1998, 1999.
4
Nash 1950; Schelling 1960; Walton and McKersie 1965; Raiffa 1982; Scharpf 1997.
5
Moravcsik 1998, 61.
5
leaders or entrepreneurs will gain a position to shape the distributional outcomes of international
cooperation.
The propositions of the efficient negotiation perspective are challenged by the informal
leadership perspective, which takes bargaining impediments as its starting point and underlines
the role of leaders or entrepreneurs in overcoming these problems. 6 This perspective is rooted in
rational choice theory as well, but mainly draws on collective-action theory and transaction-cost
theory. 7 It underlines that complex multilateral negotiations tend to be fraught with various forms
of bargaining problems that prevent states from concluding mutually advantageous deals. The
initiation of bargaining is burdened by conflicts over the agenda. The fear of exploitation makes
the parties unwilling to reveal their true preferences and reluctant to offer concessions during the
course of negotiations. The complexity of multilateral bargaining renders it difficult for the
parties to identify viable agreements, and if they succeed, the existence of multiple equilibria will
lead to distributional conflicts.
This perspective on the efficiency of multilateral negotiations translates into an optimistic
position on the importance of political leadership. Whereas the parties on their own may be
unable to overcome bargaining impediments, leaders or entrepreneurs can dramatically improve
the chances of success through measures that solve or circumvent these collective-action
problems. More specifically, they can facilitate agreement by shaping the agenda of international
negotiations, drawing attention to the issues at stake, devising innovative policy options, building
viable coalitions, and brokering agreement. Proponents of this perspective generally conclude
that leadership or entrepreneurship is a necessary, although not sufficient, condition for success
in multilateral negotiations. “Leadership…is a critical determinant of success or failure in the
6
See, especially, O. Young 1991, 1999; but also Fiorina and Shepsle 1989; Underdal 1994; Malnes 1995; Sjöstedt
1999.
7
Frohlich, Oppenheimer, and Young 1971; Keohane 1984.
6
processes of institutional bargaining that dominate efforts to form international regimes or, more
generally, institutional arrangements in international society.” 8 While paying relatively less
attention to the distribution of gains from multilateral negotiations, this perspective suggests that
leaders or entrepreneurs are self-interested and likely to be rewarded for their services. The
collective benefits generated by their interventions ensure that the parties are in a position to
compensate those who provide political leadership. These rewards need not be material in nature,
but can also take the shape of intangible currencies, such as prestige, reputation, political
influence in other arenas, or progress toward the achievement of some larger personal goal.
The theoretical argument developed in this paper speaks to the debate between the efficient
negotiation and informal leadership approaches, by specifying when, why, and how formal
leadership matters in international cooperation. While sharing important analytical affinities with
both perspectives – notably, the rationalist approach to bargaining – the theory of formal
leadership is distinct in two important ways. First, it addresses a form of leadership that the
efficient negotiation perspective is unable to account for, and whose specific characteristics the
informal leadership perspective does not recognize. Second, the theory is explicitly designed to
account for variation in the demand for and supply of leadership, where the dominant approaches
offer competing propositions.
The efficient negotiation perspective rejects the potential importance of formal leadership,
along with other forms of leadership or entrepreneurship, when assuming that states generally are
capable of identifying and concluding efficient agreements by themselves. The informal
leadership perspective, for its part, recognizes the demand for leadership in multilateral
negotiations, but is agnostic about the identity of leaders or entrepreneurs. Leaders are defined by
their attempts to address collective-action problems, and may be state officials, supranational
bureaucrats, representatives of non-governmental organizations, or private individuals. No
8
O. Young 1991, 281.
7
institutional position in international bargaining provides privileged opportunities to perform this
function. My argument points to the limits of this approach, by distinguishing between formal
and informal sources of political leadership, and by specifying how access to the institutional
platform of the chairmanship grants actors leadership resources they otherwise would not have
possessed.
Formal Leadership: A Rational Institutionalist Theory
The theory I advance offers testable propositions about the demand for and supply of formal
leadership in multilateral negotiations. Privileging interests, information, and institutions as
explanatory variables, it generates specific hypotheses about the conditions under which states
are likely to delegate process powers to formal leaders, and the conditions under which formal
leaders are likely to influence outcomes in multilateral bargaining. The argument draws on
central tenets of rational choice institutionalism: a view of politics as a series of contracting
dilemmas that may inhibit mutually advantageous exchange; a functionalist approach to
institutional choice and development; a recognition of the agency problems inherent in processes
of delegation; and a perspective on formal rules as enabling and constraining factors. The theory
is summarized in Figure 1 and developed below in two steps.
8
Demand for Formal Leadership
Collective-action
problems impede
decentralized bargaining
States delegate
process functions
to the chairmanship
• Agenda failure
• Negotiation failure
• Representation failure
• Agenda management
• Brokerage
• Representation
Engagement of alternative
leaders conditions delegation
Supply of Formal Leadership
Negotiation chairs
perform designated
functions, drawing on
power resources
Activities of negotiation
chairs shape bargaining
outcomes
• Privileged information
• Procedural control
• Enhanced efficiency
• Distributional effects
Formal institutional environment
conditions influence
FIGURE 1. Formal Leadership: A Rational Institutionalist Theory
The Demand for Formal Leadership
Why do national governments, sensitive to challenges of their decision-making authority, agree
to vest powers of process control in the office of chairmanship? I claim that the delegation of
authority to the chairmanship of international organizations and multilateral conferences should
be understood as a functional response to three forms of collective-action problems: agenda
failure, negotiation failure, and representation failure. The tasks that states generally confer on
the chairmanship – agenda management, brokerage, and representation – answer directly to these
problems. If this theory correctly captures the sources of demand for formal leadership, we
would expect the powers delegated to the chairmanship to vary with the pattern of collectiveaction problems in specific multilateral contexts.
This argument should not be misunderstood as a claim that only formal leaders may
ameliorate these collective-action problems. The organization and practice of international
cooperation testifies that individual states, coalitions of states, and international secretariats
sometimes are engaged to perform similar functions. Hence, the existence of alternative leaders
conditions the empowerment of chairmanship institutions by offering competing institutional
9
solutions to agenda failure, negotiation failure, and representation failure. Nor should the
argument be read as a claim that these are the only impediments to efficient multilateral
bargaining. For instance, failure to secure domestic support frequently hinders international
cooperation, but is not a collective-action problem that generates a demand for formal leadership.
Agenda failure refers to the absence of progress in negotiations because of shifting,
overcrowded or underdeveloped agendas. As negotiation theorists regularly emphasize,
complexity increases manifold as we move from bilateral to multilateral bargaining, reducing
states’ capacity to negotiate and conclude efficient accords. 9 Whereas the existence of multiple
parties and issues to some extent may facilitate agreement by allowing for cross-cutting package
deals, there is a notable risk that agendas will become overcrowded. As Richard Walton and
Robert McKersie emphasize: “The parties would want to avoid having an overwhelming number
[of issues] – so that the negotiators are not overloaded and do not need to devote too much time
sorting through items to the detriment of genuine exploitation of particular items.” 10 Conflicts
over the format of the agenda and the priority of the issues can force states to devote scarce
resources to pre-negotiation preparations whose sole purpose is to arrive at a negotiable
agenda. 11
Rational choice theorists in the study of legislative institutions highlight a related source of
agenda failure. Decision systems that grant equal agenda-setting opportunities to all actors are
liable to issue cycling and will be unable to secure stable majorities for the proposals advanced. 12
This problem may arise when an issue involves multiple dimensions on which the parties
disagree, for instance, left/right next to environmentalist/industrialist. The effect is a constant
shifting of coalitions depending on what aspect of an issue is being considered. While originally
9
Touval 1989; Zartman 1994a.
10
Walton and McKersie 1965, 146.
11
Stein 1989.
12
McKelvey 1976; Riker 1980.
10
developed in relation to national legislatures, this argument sheds light on the challenges of
arriving at stable outcomes in multilateral negotiations as well. 13 Issues negotiated in world
politics, such as regional integration, trade liberalization, security management, and
environmental protection, typically involve more than one dimension of contention.
The functional solution to the problem of agenda failure is the institutionalization of
agenda control. Negotiation theorists point to procedures and practices for dealing with
complexity, such as issue sequencing and subtraction, coalition building, and single negotiating
texts. 14 Rational choice theorists, for their part, speak of how institutional arrangements in
legislative politics, such as agenda-setting power, gate-keeping authority, and sequential choice,
can prevent the manifestation of agenda instability. 15
In the world of multilateral negotiations, the delegation of agenda-management powers to
the chairmanship constitutes a prominent strategy for dealing with the risk of agenda failure. The
responsibilities conferred on the chairmanship of international organizations and conferences
typically comprise tasks and solutions prescribed for dealing with overcrowded, underdeveloped
or unstable agendas. The chairmanship normally possesses the authority to take general decisions
on the sequence, frequency, and method of negotiation, as well as specific decisions on the
structure of meetings, the format of the meeting agenda, the right to speak, the voting procedure,
and the summary of results. By executing these powers, negotiation chairs keep the agenda to
manageable proportions, assign priority to the issues on the agenda, and structure the
negotiations.
Negotiation failure refers to deadlocks and breakdowns in bargaining that are caused by the
parties’ inability to identify the underlying zone of agreement, because of stratagems that conceal
13
Mesquita 1990.
14
Raiffa 1982, ch. 17; Sebenius 1983; Dupont 1994; Hampson with Hart 1995, ch. 2.
15
Shepsle 1979; Shepsle and Weingast 1984; Fiorina and Shepsle 1989; Baron 1994.
11
or distort their true preferences. This is a classic bargaining problem. 16 For purposes of finding
an agreement that makes all parties better off, states must signal what they can and cannot accept.
Yet revealing information about one’s true preferences is both risky and non-tactical, since it
exposes a party to exploitation and deprives it of the weapon of concessions. Instead, states have
incentives to be secretive or dishonest about their true preferences by exaggerating the value of
their own sacrifices and downplaying the benefit of others’ concessions. The result is a distorted
picture of preferences that either reduces the perceived zone of agreement, with the effect that
gains are “left on the table,” or eliminates it altogether, with the effect that negotiations break
down.
The logic of this bargaining problem is strong in bilateral negotiations – its standard
representation. Yet it is compounded in the multilateral setting, with its particular difficulties of
communicating preferences and exchanging information among a large number of parties. 17 As
one observer notes: “The chief obstacles to multilateral negotiations are complexity and
uncertainty: complexity created by the large number of parties to the negotiation and issues on
the table, uncertainty heightened by the difficulties of communicating preferences and
exchanging information among a large number of participants.” 18
In international cooperation, the delegation of brokerage responsibilities to the
chairmanship constitutes a common way for states to deal with the risk of negotiation failure.
This act of delegation seldom involves the conferral of formal powers. Instead, it takes the shape
of a practice among states to share information about their private preferences with negotiation
chairs, and a mandate for negotiation chairs to structure bargaining around single negotiating
texts. Through bilateral encounters with the bargaining parties, negotiation chairs are provided
16
Luce and Raiffa 1957; Walton and McKersie 1965; Lax and Sebenius 1986, ch. 2.
17
Winham 1977; Sebenius 1983; Touval 1989; Zartman 1994a.
18
Hampson with Hart 1995, 23.
12
with privileged information about state preferences. This information permits them to identify
any underlying zone of agreement and construct compromises that can capture this zone. The
authority to formulate a single negotiating text facilitates this process and allows negotiation
chairs to cut through the complexity of competing and overlapping proposals.
The risk of representation failure is a product of interdependent decision-making in
international cooperation. Multilateral negotiations seldom take place in a vacuum. Instead,
bargaining in one issue area or body tends to be nested within broader processes of negotiation
and may even be dependent on agreements with external actors. 19 In such cases, the negotiating
states must find a formula for collective representation vis-à-vis third parties.
The interdependency between a negotiating forum and its external environment may take a
variety of forms. International regimes are becoming increasingly interlinked, and activities in
one issue area (e.g. trade) often impact on activities in another field (e.g. environment),
producing a demand for mechanisms of inter-institutional coordination. Furthermore,
international organizations seldom encompass all potential parties, creating a demand for
procedures that enable the members to handle relations with non-members and to negotiate the
accession of prospective members. Finally, agreements within one negotiating body may be
directly dependent on external negotiations with third parties, generating a demand for agents
that can represent the collective of states.
The delegation of representation authority to the chairmanship offers a functional solution
to these problems. International organizations cannot be represented by all constituent member
states in their external relations, but must device institutional arrangements for representation and
negotiation. States’ decision to empower the chairmanship to speak on their behalf constitutes a
19
On nested games generally, see Tsebelis 1990.
13
subset of the general phenomenon of representation powers being delegated to negotiating
agents. 20
In sum, this theory predicts that the powers conferred on the chairmanship of international
negotiation bodies will reflect particular functional demands in cooperation, and be concentrated
in the areas of agenda management, brokerage, and representation. Empirical data lend support to
this hypothesis when providing evidence of a causal link between actual or anticipated collectiveaction problems and specific acts of delegation. By contrast, empirical data challenge this
proposition if the conferral of authority on the chairmanship is random, or systematically
addresses other problems than agenda failure, negotiation failure, and representation failure.
The Supply of Formal Leadership
What are the consequences of creating and empowering chairmanship institutions in international
cooperation? I claim that the office of the chairmanship, once vested with powers of process
control, becomes a political platform with implications for the outcomes of multilateral
negotiations. More specifically, I suggest that formal leaders enjoy privileged access to a set of
informational and procedural power resources that may enable them both to enhance the
efficiency of negotiations and to favor certain distributional outcomes. However, I also specify
how the institutional environment conditions the ability of formal leaders to steer negotiations
toward the agreements they most prefer.
Negotiation chairs benefit from an asymmetrical distribution of two forms of power
resources. First, they tend to enjoy access to information that is either unavailable to the other
parties, or relatively more costly to acquire. As principal-agent theory reminds us, information
asymmetries may arise because an agent acquires information through its activities that the
20
Mnookin and Susskind 1999; Meunier 2000; Pollack 2003, ch. 5.
14
principal cannot obtain, or because the behavior of an agent is not fully observable to the
principal. 21
In multilateral negotiations, formal leaders benefit from information asymmetry in three
ways. First, the practice of bilateral encounters at which governments offer negotiation chairs
privileged information about national resistance points provides formal leaders with unique
information about state preferences. Second, international secretariats at the chairman’s special
disposal endow formal leaders with expert information about the technical subject matter of the
negotiations (content expertise), as well as legal and procedural advice (process expertise). 22
Third, formal leaders tend to know more about their own influence over outcomes than the
negotiating parties. This is particularly true with regard to the function of representation, when
formal leaders often interact with third parties beyond the immediate control of the collective of
states, since close oversight would reduce the representative’s capacity to conclude external
deals. 23
The second power resource is asymmetrical control over negotiation procedure. As process
managers, formal leaders tend to enjoy privileged control over decisions on the sequence of
negotiations (from prenegotiation to negotiation and endgame), the frequency of negotiation
sessions (and associated time for domestic deliberations and bilateral interaction), the format of
negotiations (multilateral, minilateral or bilateral), and the method of negotiation (competing
proposals or single negotiating text). As managers of individual negotiation sessions, formal
leaders open and conclude meetings, structure the meeting agenda, allot the right to speak, direct
voting procedures, and summarize the results. Expressed in more political terms, negotiation
21
Kiewiet and McCubbins 1991, ch. 2; Miller 1992, chs. 6-7.
22
Wall and Lynn 1993; Metcalfe 1998.
23
Nicolaïdis 1999; Meunier 2000.
15
chairs tends to enjoy asymmetrical influence over who gets to say what, when, how, and to what
effect.
By drawing on these power resources, negotiation chairs can help states overcome
bargaining impediments that prevent the realization of collective gains. However, the very same
resources may be exploited to pursue private gains as well. As agenda managers, negotiation
chairs are endowed with formal procedural instruments that permit the organization of a
negotiable agenda; yet the structuring of the agenda is not a neutral exercise, since it involves
prioritizing some issues at the expense of others. As brokers, negotiation chairs are granted
privileged access to information about the parties’ preferences in the pursuit of viable
compromise proposals; yet this exclusive preference information may be used to promote
agreements with certain distributional outcomes rather than others. As representatives,
negotiations chairs enjoy the power to act and negotiate on behalf of a collective of states; yet the
interaction with third parties offers possibilities to present positions and strike bargains that
diverge from the group’s median preference.
Assuming that negotiation chairs are strategic and opportunistic actors with an independent
set of preferences, we would expect them to exploit their exclusive resources to promote
agreements with distributional implications structured in their own favor. In the language favored
by rational choice theorists, formal leadership would not only move outcomes toward the Pareto
frontier (making negotiations more efficient), but also along the Pareto frontier (affecting the
distribution of gains). 24
However, negotiation chairs do not operate in a political world without constraints. I
conceive of the formal institutional environment as an intervening factor, affecting the discretion
of negotiation chairs. Two components merit particular attention: the institutional rules
governing agenda setting and decision making, and the institutional design of the chairmanship.
24
Krasner 1991; P. Young 1991; Moravcsik 1998.
16
Agenda-setting rules shape the ease with which the chair can favor the introduction of
proposals it wants to promote. Where the parties have concentrated agenda-setting power in one
actor, this limits the discretion of formal leaders, unless this actor is the chairmanship.
Negotiation chairs will be unable to present formal proposals on their own initiative, but must
convince the exclusive agenda setter to table them as its own. Where all parties possess equal
agenda-setting rights, negotiation chairs will find it relatively easier to influence the formal
agenda. They can either table proposals on their own (if they represent a state) or turn to any of
the parties (if they represent a supranational institution). Furthermore, equal agenda-setting rights
benefit formal leaders indirectly, by raising the likelihood of overloaded agendas and subsequent
delegation to the chairmanship of the power to draft single negotiating texts.
Decision rules shape the ease with which the chair can promote proposals that satisfy the
requirements of an efficient bargain and meet the partisan interests of the chair. 25 Where
unanimity or consensus is prescribed, negotiation chairs must take the interests of all parties into
consideration, and will find it relatively difficult to steer negotiations toward their ideal point.
Finding an agreement that makes everyone better off may in itself constitute a major challenge.
Where decisions may be taken through majority voting, it is relatively easier for states to reach
an efficient outcome and for negotiation chairs to influence the distribution of gains. The fact that
not all parties must be brought on board expands the range of potential agreements, as well as the
discretion of formal leaders, who may select among multiple equilibria.
The institutional design of the chairmanship affects the incentives and discretion of formal
leaders. The world of international cooperation offers three alternative institutional models. The
first model – rotation of the chairmanship between the parties – is likely to create dynamics of
diffuse reciprocity that work to the advantage of negotiation chairs. This model effectively
entails a sharing over time of the private gains that states can derive from the chairmanship.
25
On the implications of decision rules, see Scharpf 1997; Tsebelis 2002.
17
Instead of investing scarce resources in costly control mechanisms, we would expect states to
offer each other latitude in the execution of the chairmanship, as all parties eventually get their
privileged opportunity to direct the negotiations.
The second model – election of one state’s representative as permanent chairman – is likely
to result in constrained formal leaders with more limited impact on distributional outcomes.
Unless states wish to grant one of the parties extraordinary means of securing national interests,
they will establish means of control. The parties can exercise ex ante control by electing a
chairman from a state with central and/or weak preferences in the issues under negotiation, or by
appointing co-chairmen drawn from competing interest constellations. Alternatively, the parties
can establish ex post control mechanisms, such as time limits and re-election restrictions.
The third model – appointment of a supranational official as permanent chair – presents
states with a similar control problem, but is unlikely to yield outcomes systematically structured
to the advantage or disadvantage of any particular government. Supranational secretariats hold
preferences of their own, normally the furthering of the political ideals embodied in the
international organization they serve. The supranational promotion of these ideals generally
consists of efforts to facilitate the process of cooperation and tends to serve the collective good of
the regime. While favoring the most ambitious negotiation parties on each individual dossier, the
aggregated effect of these actions on state interests is likely to be diffuse, given variation
between the parties in the relative weight attributed to alternative issues.
In sum, this theory suggests that the office of the chairmanship may offer the incumbent
privileged opportunities to shape negotiated outcomes. Empirical data lend support to the
theory’s hypotheses if the influence of negotiation chairs can be linked to informational and
procedural advantages, and varies with formal properties of the institutional environment. By
contrast, empirical data that give evidence of random patterns of influence, or systematically
speak to alternative power resources and behavioral constraints, challenge the same propositions.
18
In the following two sections, I assess the explanatory power of this theory through a case study
of decision making in the EU and comparative evidence from trade, security, and environmental
negotiations.
Formal Leadership in the European Union
In the EU, the office of the Presidency rotates between all participating governments on a sixmonth basis. The member state that holds the Presidency chairs the working groups, committees,
and ministerial meetings in the Council of Ministers – the EU’s central decision forum – as well
as the summits of the European Council. In this section, I summarize the empirical argument of a
book-length study on formal leadership in the EU. 26 The book maps the delegation of process
powers to the Presidency from the 1950s onwards, and offers six case studies of Presidency
influence. Space limitations preclude a full presentation of the empirical evidence, for which I
refer the reader to the book. Instead, I present the core results through an outline of the
Presidency’s institutional development, and synopses of the case studies.
The Institutional Development of the EU Presidency
The historical evidence strongly supports a functionalist interpretation of the EU Presidency’s
evolution from the 1950s until the early 2000s.27 When first established in 1957, the office of the
Presidency was only equipped with basic administrative powers. Today, Presidencies performs
essential functions of agenda management, brokerage, and representation that make them a
central and contested part of the political life of the EU. This transformation of the EU
26
Tallberg 2006. See also Tallberg 2003, 2004.
27
For full details, see Tallberg 2006, ch. 3.
19
chairmanship reflects a process of rational institutional adaptation to actual or anticipated
collective-action problems in European decision-making. Member governments have
continuously adjusted and extended the functions of the Presidency, in search of more efficient
methods of intergovernmental cooperation. Even if other institutions and actors at times have
been chosen to perform similar process functions, each decision to confer powers of agenda
management, brokerage, and representation on the Presidency can be linked to considerations of
efficiency in EU bargaining.
Agenda management. In the original design of the EC, the Presidency was only entrusted with
limited procedural tasks, whereas the European Commission enjoyed exclusive authority to set
the Community’s substantive agenda. Two parallel developments propelled the Presidency into a
more pronounced agenda-management role. First, the Commission’s capacity to dictate the
agenda suffered from the so-called empty chair crisis in 1965-1966, when France challenged the
development toward further supranationalism. While retaining its formal monopoly on policy
initiation, the Commission’s informal political authority was severely weakened. Second, the
scope and intensity of EC policy-making increased in the late 1960s, following the completion of
the customs union, giving rise to new working groups, committees, and ministerial
configurations in the Council. Decision-making became progressively more fragmented, and the
Council experienced problems coordinating policy developments across the whole spectrum of
EC activity. Next to the creation of the European Council in 1974, the conferral of new powers
on the Presidency constituted member governments’ primary response to the problem of
overcrowded and badly organized Council agendas.
Consecutive rounds of adaptation in institutional practices reinforced the Presidency’s
function as agenda manager, often at the expense of the Commission. The effect was to “ascribe
to the Presidency burdens, functions and opportunities for leverage which were not explicitly part
20
of the initial institutional design.” 28 The need to strengthen the Presidency, with the aim of
improving the coherence of Council activities, constituted a central part of a 1974 reform
package, the 1976 Tindemans report, and the 1979 report of the Three Wise Men. The
conclusions of the latter report well illustrate the functional demands driving this process:
In improving the Council’s performance, the first priority is to strengthen the
Presidency in its dual role of organizational control and political impetus. It is no
accident that the functions of the Presidency have been both expanded and more
widely recognised in recent years. The strong central management which it can
provide offers the most natural means of compensating for the centrifugal tendencies
within the Council. It bears the prime responsibility for tackling the spread of
specialized business, the ramifying inter-institutional relations, the differing interests
and behaviour of the Member States. --- [I]f the Presidency does not do this job, there
is not longer anyone else who can fill the breach. 29
When EC governments in the mid-1970s created new negotiation forums outside the
traditional Council machinery, through the establishment of European Political Cooperation
(EPC) and the European Council, they eschewed the services of the supranational Commission
and placed the rotating Presidency in the driving seat. In the EPC, the Presidency quickly
emerged as the primary source of political proposals, even if all governments formally held the
same right of initiative. In the European Council, the administrative and political preparation and
execution of summits devolved upon the Presidency, which gained a discretionary role in
defining and delimiting the agenda.
The 1980s and early 1990s witnessed a further expansion in EC activity, and the annual
number of ministerial meetings increased with over fifty percent from 1980 to 1993. One effect
of this development was the delegation in 1989 of an explicit authority for the Presidency to
prioritize among competing policy concerns in a comprehensive work program. The Presidency’s
agenda-management function was further strengthened by the right to propose issues for general
28
Wallace 1985, 3.
29
Three Wise Men 1979, 35.
21
policy debates, and the steadily growing use of informal meetings in the Presidency country with
agendas decided by the host government. In recognition of the political dimension of these
agenda-management powers, each Presidency nowadays appears before the European Parliament
to present its work program in the beginning of the term and to outline its achievements at the
end of the period.
Brokerage. In the early years of EC cooperation, the member governments mainly relied on the
Commission as broker of compromise in the Council. Not being one of the bargaining parties, the
Commission was expected to be detached from national interests and able to function as an
impartial mediator. Yet, increasingly aware and skeptical of the Commission’s supranational
agenda, member governments began to rely more heavily on the rotating Presidency as their
preferred broker from the mid-1960s and onwards. In the EPC and the European Council,
member states’ decision to exclude the Commission from the institutional framework left the
Presidency without a competitor. Nowadays, the “Presidency compromise” is an established term
among EU policy-makers and observers.
The demand for the brokerage services of the Presidency mainly was driven by two
developments. First, the growing complexity of European decision-making made it relatively
more difficult for the parties to identify potential agreements. Successive waves of enlargement
expanded the number of bargaining parties and the spectrum of preferences. In addition, the
expansion of the EU’s policy range, and the associated growth in negotiation arenas, created a
pressure for cross-cutting package deals. As a link between the various bargaining arenas in the
Council, the Presidency was well placed to meet these needs.
Second, a string of institutional reforms, stretching from the Single European Act (SEA) in
1986 to the Nice Treaty in 2000, created a demand for more active mediation and coalitionbuilding. The growing use of majority voting in the Council gave the Presidency an important
22
role in identifying and building viable coalitions. To facilitate this task, the member states in
1987 provided the Presidency with the authority to call votes. Since then, it has become standard
practice for the Presidency to work toward a minimum agreement supported by the requisite
number of member states, and then invite outliers to join the majority under the threat of voting.
Furthermore, the extension of significant legislative powers to the European Parliament increased
the dependence on the Presidency as broker. The obligation of the Commission to take the
Parliament’s views into full consideration when revising its legislative proposals placed the
responsibility to broker compromises in the Council firmly with the Presidency.
To facilitate brokerage, EU governments have equipped the office with specific mediation
resources that enable the Presidency to unveil resistance points and identify underlying zones of
agreement. The General Secretariat of the Council, at the Presidency’s special disposal, tracks
state preferences and positions, provides tactical advice on negotiation procedure, and offers
expertise on the dossiers under negotiation. To sound out concerns, extract concessions, and test
compromise proposals, Presidency representatives at various levels engage in shuttle diplomacy
– tours des capitales – meeting bilaterally with their counterparts in the European capitals. The
format of the bilateral encounter permits governments to share information on their bottom lines
with the Presidency, thus improving the chances of agreement without exposing themselves to
exploitation by other parties. The practice of the “confessional” was developed to serve the same
purpose during the course of negotiation sessions. When confronted with a deadlock, the
Presidency may adjourn the proceedings for confidential discussions with individual delegations.
“The objectives are threefold: first, to encourage individual delegations to be more open and
more direct about the ‘bottom lines’ of their negotiating positions; second, to put pressure more
23
fiercely on individual delegations to make concessions; and, third, sometimes, to offer
‘unofficial’ inducements to cooperation.” 30
Representation. Since the early 1970s, the Presidency step by step has acquired more
encompassing responsibilities as member governments’ external representative vis-à-vis third
parties and internal representative in relation to other EU institutions. The evolution of these
representation powers closely reflects increasing functional demands, resulting from growing EU
involvement in world politics and intensified legislative bargaining with the European
Parliament.
The first decade and a half of European foreign policy cooperation was characterized by
consecutive rounds of delegation to the Presidency. When EC governments launched the EPC in
1970, they charged the Presidency with the task of functioning as liaison with the applicant
countries at the time. In 1973, they expanded this authority by conferring the right to speak on
their behalf in EPC dialogue in general. In 1975, the Presidency became the member states’
collective spokesperson in the UN General Assembly. In 1981, the member states endowed the
Presidency with the authority to meet with third parties on their behalf, explicitly citing external
demands for contact channels and expectations on concerted European action. By the mid-1980s,
the Presidency’s function as external representative was well-established: “As the external
relations of the Community have expanded, so different formulae have been agreed for
representing common positions, which have come to impose more and more of this responsibility
on the Presidency. Since the establishment of political co-operation, the representational role of
the Presidency has taken a quantum leap forward.” 31
30
Hayes-Renshaw and Wallace 1997, 147.
31
Wallace 1985, 19.
24
In the 1990s, the Presidency was delegated explicit negotiation powers and greater
executive authority, following the failure of EU governments to respond rapidly and concertedly
to the velvet revolutions of Eastern Europe 1989-1991, the war in the Gulf in 1991, and the
outbreak of fighting in Yugoslavia in 1991. When revising the institutional structure of EU
foreign policy in the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, the member states equipped the Presidency with
the power to negotiate international agreements on their behalf. At the same time, the late 1990s
witnessed a broadening of the formula for external representation, through the appointment of
secretary general of the Council Secretariat as High Representative for the Common Foreign and
Security Policy.
The evolution of the Presidency’s function as Council representative vis-à-vis other EU
institutions closely reflects the European Parliament’s development into an important interlocutor
in the EU’s budgetary and legislative procedures. In the 1950s and 1960, when the Council
enjoyed exclusive decision-making power, there was little demand for mechanisms of interaction
with the Parliament. It was only in the first half of the 1970s, when the Parliament was granted
important powers in the adoption of the EC budget, that the Council was confronted with a
representation dilemma: “The Council consists of a representative from each Member State. Each
has equal and distinct status. --- Who, then, should represent the Council before the
Parliament?” 32 The member governments chose to appoint the Presidency as their intermediary
in the budget negotiations. These arrangements were further developed in 1982, when a specific
procedure for budget negotiations between the presidents of the Council, the Parliament, and the
Commission was introduced.
A second phase began with the conferral of new legislative powers on the Parliament
through the SEA in 1986. The treaty granted the Parliament the authority to make legislation it
disliked difficult for the Council to adopt, and thereby forced the Council to engage in legislative
32
Westlake 1999, 332.
25
bargaining. EU governments appointed the Presidency as their representative in these interinstitutional negotiations. The 1991 Maastricht Treaty and the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty further
strengthened the legislative powers of the Parliament by introducing and extending the so-called
co-decision procedure, which grants equal decision power to the Council and the Parliament.
Formally, legislative disagreements are settled in the so-called conciliation committee, where the
Presidency leads the Council delegation. In practice, however, mutually acceptable texts tend to
be chiseled out in informal, bilateral negotiations between the representatives of the Council and
the Parliament.
The Influence of EU Presidencies
In order to assess the influence of Presidencies in EU negotiations, I have conducted a set of six
case studies, selected on the basis of three criteria. First, I have systematically selected cases
where the Presidency government holds preferences at one end of the spectrum, which makes it
relatively easier to empirically trace and demonstrate influence over distributional outcomes,
compared to cases where Presidencies hold central preferences. Second, I have chosen cases to
ensure variation in formal institutional rules, identified as a central intervening variable in the
theory of formal leadership. Third, I have selected cases to ensure variation across Presidency
governments in structural power capabilities, and across dossiers in political salience.
The case studies provide comprehensive empirical evidence in favor of the Presidency
office as a platform for political influence in EU bargaining. While performing functions that
enhance the efficiency of EU negotiations, Presidency governments simultaneously exploit the
chairmanship for national political purposes, wielding its privileged power resources for private
gain. Making effective use of their asymmetrical control over information and procedure, the
Danish, Finnish, French, German, and Swedish Presidencies in the late 1990s and early 2000s
succeeded in shifting outcomes in their own favor in the areas of enlargement, institutional
26
reform, environmental policy, budgetary policy, and foreign policy. At the same time, these case
studies point to the conditionality of Presidency influence. Agenda-setting rules shaped the extent
to which Presidencies could independently launch new policy initiatives, or had to rely on close
cooperation with the Commission. Decision rules affected the capacity of Presidencies to shape
distributional outcomes by limiting or expanding the zone of agreement. Taken together, the six
cases grant support to the proposition that rotation as a design principle produces a system of
diffuse reciprocity, where member states take turns in providing the services and enjoying the
benefits of the chairmanship.
Agenda management. The structuring of the agenda permits Presidency governments to assign
priority to competing political concerns. The cases selected from the Finnish and German
Presidencies in 1999 demonstrate that Presidencies’ influence over the agenda both takes the
shape of traditional agenda setting and includes forms of non-decision-making. 33 Presidencies
engage in agenda setting when they raise the awareness of neglected problems and devise new
policy initiatives. They call attention to prioritized concerns by including them in the official
Presidency program and scheduling informal meetings devoted to these themes. They place new
issues on the formal agenda either directly, where the member states share the power of initiative,
or indirectly, where the Commission holds this right and can be convinced to present Presidency
initiatives as its own. But, in addition, Presidencies engage in non-decision-making when they
exploit the exclusive control over the agenda to downplay or even exclude controversial issues.
They assign limited negotiation time to lowly prioritized issues, refuse to pick up nationally
sensitive dossiers during their period at the helm, or block progress on unwelcome proposals
through deliberately unviable “compromise” suggestions.
33
For full details, see Tallberg 2006, ch. 4.
27
The Finnish campaign to establish a Northern Dimension in the EU’s foreign policy shows
how access to the power resources of the chairmanship may be used to launch new policy
initiatives. The aim of the Finnish campaign was to produce a coherent EU foreign policy toward
Russia and the Baltic Sea region, matching the EU’s policy for the Mediterranean region. The
initiative constituted Finland’s first attempt to shape the orientation of EU foreign policy after
joining the organization in 1995. Finland launched the campaign for the Northern Dimension in
1997, with the intention of consolidating and institutionalizing this policy initiative during the
Presidency in 1999. Once in control of the chairmanship, the Finnish government made extensive
use of the procedural instruments at its disposal. The initiative was anchored in the Presidency
program and placed on the agenda of formal and informal meetings, seminars, and conferences
with EU and external partners. Finland courted the Commission to secure the supranational
executive’s support in the implementation of the initiative, and arranged a ministerial conference
specifically devoted to the Northern Dimension. Finally, and most importantly, it engineered
support for a European Council decision on a policy action plan. The Finnish campaign was
central to the institutionalization of the Northern Dimension as a component of EU foreign and
security policy, even if the requirement of unanimous approval forced the Finnish government to
dilute the contents of the initiative.
The German government’s removal of a nationally sensitive directive on car recycling from
the Council’s agenda illustrates the Presidency’s ability to engage in non-decision-making. The
proposed directive would have obliged manufacturers to recycle 80-85 percent of scrap vehicles,
at great cost for Europe’s car producers. The German auto industry would have been hardest hit,
and successfully lobbied the German government to backtrack on a previous commitment to a
draft agreement tabled by the preceding Austrian Presidency. At its first meeting in charge of the
Environmental Council, the German Presidency exploited the prerogatives of the chair by
unilaterally deciding to drop the issue from the agenda and force a postponement of the decision,
28
to the great dismay of other governments. During the spring of 1999, Germany used the time it
had gained to lobby the United Kingdom and Spain, in order to build a blocking minority in the
Council. The two governments eventually yielded, following diplomatic pressure and sidepayments. At the final meeting of the Environmental Council, the German Presidency could
conclude that the proposed directive no longer enjoyed the support required for adoption. The
directive was eventually adopted more than a year later, on terms more favorable to German
interests, following a compromise in the Council and negotiations with the Parliament.
Brokerage. The engineering of intergovernmental bargains permits EU Presidencies to select
among multiple equilibria and steer negotiations toward outcomes they privately prefer. The
cases drawn from the German and French Presidencies in 1999 and 2000 demonstrate how
institutional practices specifically developed to aid the Presidency in its function as broker are
used for both collective and private gain. 34 Presidencies exploit the privileged information about
state preferences obtained through bilateral confessionals and tours des capitals to extract
concessions from the parties. They use the brokerage mandate to devise single negotiating texts
that keep desired components on the table and sensitive options away from it. They speed up
negotiations and improve the chances of agreement on nationally prioritized issues through
decisions on the frequency and format of bargaining sessions. By consequence, it is rare for the
Council to arrive at decisions that go against the explicit desires of the Presidency.
The German Presidency faced the challenge of concluding the negotiations on the Agenda
2000 reform package, targeting the EU’s agricultural policy, regional policy, and long-term
budget for 2000-2006. The reform proposals were highly contentious and Germany itself held
extreme preferences on several dossiers. Making full use of its brokerage resources, the German
Presidency succeeded in forging a package agreement that was acceptable to all parties and
34
For full details, see Tallberg 2006, ch. 5.
29
safeguarded central German interests. To create favorable conditions for a deal, the Presidency
intensified the formal meeting schedule, moved the dossier to the top of meeting agendas, and
called informal negotiation sessions. In order to focus and steer the negotiations, the Presidency
adopted a specific brokerage formula – the negotiating box – that effectively constituted a single
negotiating text. Issues of contention were unlocked through a combination of bilateral
confessionals that unveiled the parties’ bottom lines, and follow-up papers that outlined new
compromise alternatives. The final deal corresponded closely to the German positions on
agricultural reform, reflected the German demands for budget discipline over the next financial
period, and balanced competing demands on regional spending. By contrast, Germany only
partially reached the goal of reducing its net contribution to the EU budget, which is best
explained by the veto power conferred on the existing net beneficiaries by the requirement of
unanimity.
The French Presidency was scheduled to conclude the intergovernmental conference (IGC)
convened in 2000 for purposes of revising the EU treaties. The IGC addressed controversial
institutional issues, and it was no secret that France strongly preferred certain outcomes over
others. To facilitate an agreement by December 2000, France intensified the meeting schedule,
moved the IGC to the top of Council agendas, and sequenced the negotiations so as to achieve
agreement on the easier issues first and save the thorny matters to the European Council summit
in Nice. Confessionals and tours des capitales served to elicit privileged information about
national resistance points, which subsequently was used to draft revised versions of the
Presidency’s single negotiating text. On the eve of the Nice summit, the Presidency invented and
distributed institutional side-payments. Throughout the negotiations, the French government
scrupulously exploited the chairmanship to favor national objectives. Proposals framed as
compromises from the chair often constituted national position papers. The prerogative to sum up
negotiation sessions was frequently used to promote results desired by the Presidency. The open
30
use of the office’s resources to this end resulted in much negative publicity. Yet, if we assess the
substantive outcome of the negotiations, France was remarkably successful in protecting its vital
interests. The French government achieved a reduction in the future number of Commissioners,
obtained a rebalancing of voting weight in favor of large states, secured formal French vote
parity with Germany, prevented majority voting in nationally sensitive areas, and facilitated
deeper cooperation for groups of member states. The requirement of unanimity favored the
parties wishing the least change to existing rules on the issues with status-quo alternatives,
notably, the extension of majority voting. This worked to the advantage of the Presidency on
some dossiers (e.g., trade policy and immigration policy, blocked by France), but reduced its
capacity to steer the negotiations toward its most preferred outcome on others (e.g., taxation and
social policy, blocked by the UK).
Representation. The function as representative in internal and external bargaining grants
Presidencies the opportunity to influence the agreements that EU governments negotiate with
third parties. The Swedish and Danish Presidencies in 2001 and 2002 offer cases that well
illustrate how the discretion as representative simultaneously can be used to favor collective and
private interests. 35 Privileged by informational and procedural asymmetries, and relieved of
intrusive control mechanisms, Presidencies attempt to steer negotiations toward their ideal
outcome. Typically, Presidency governments exploit the unique position at the interface between
internal and external negotiations to play off recalcitrant parties against each other, channel
preference information in strategic ways, initiate informal negotiations beyond the control of
competing parties, and negotiate fait accompli agreements.
The Swedish Presidency represented the Council in legislative negotiations with the
European Parliament over new rules on public access to EU documents. The large majority of
35
For full details, see Tallberg 2006, ch. 6.
31
member states wished to uphold confidentiality, whereas the Parliament advocated far-reaching
transparency reforms. Sweden belonged to the minority of states with preferences close to the
Parliament’s perspective, because of the threat posed by restrictive EU rules to the Swedish
freedom of information act. Despite this troublesome position, the Swedish Presidency managed
to engineer an agreement close to its preferred outcome. Exploiting its procedural prerogatives,
the Presidency initiated informal negotiations with the Parliament’s representatives even before
the Council had come to an internal position. The absence of a Council mandate granted the
Presidency significant discretion, as did the closed format of these talks. In order to achieve a
solution that met the interests of the Council minority, Sweden played off the secrecy hawks in
the Council against the transparency extremists in the Parliament, emphasizing the concessions
made by both camps. The deal negotiated with the Parliament met with strong objections when
presented to the Council, but the Presidency managed to prevent the secrecy-oriented states from
mobilizing a coherent alternative before the scheduled deadline of the negotiations. The Swedish
strategy was dependent on the use of majority voting, and would not have succeeded if unanimity
had been required. The new transparency rules were eventually hailed by the European media as
bringing about a revolution in the access to EU documents.
The Danish Presidency functioned as the EU’s representative in the accession negotiations
with ten candidate countries from mainly Central and Eastern Europe. For economic and political
reasons, a broad and swift enlargement of the EU had been Denmark’s top priority in the EU
ever since the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. The EU’s Mediterranean members, poised to lose
from the scheduled redirection of funds toward Central and Eastern Europe, were more skeptical.
The Presidency period presented Denmark with an opportunity to solve the outstanding, highly
problematic, dossiers, thus bringing the negotiations to a conclusion at the Copenhagen summit
of the European Council. Once in office, the Danish government used the procedural powers of
the Presidency to put other urgent concerns on the backburner and focus the EU’s negotiation
32
resources on the enlargement dossier. For instance, Denmark reserved the summits of the
European Council for enlargement negotiations, and transformed Council meetings into
negotiation sessions with the candidate countries. The Presidency engaged in informal, bilateral
consultations with both member states and candidate countries, in order to gain the information
necessary to construct an acceptable package agreement. The access to both arenas was utilized
to play off the most recalcitrant parties against each other. At the Copenhagen summit, the
Danish Presidency exploited its discretion by offering concessions that had not been condoned by
the Council, but which the Presidency correctly judged would be reluctantly accepted, when
presented as a fait accompli. The conclusion of the negotiations during Danish chairmanship
paved the way for a broad enlargement of the EU in May 2004.
Formal Leadership in Security, Trade, and Environmental Negotiations
In the previous section, I demonstrated that negotiations in the EU lend extensive support to the
theory of formal leadership. Yet the exclusive EU focus raises questions about the explanatory
reach of the theory. Is the phenomenon of negotiation chairs that wield power and influence
outcomes isolated to the EU, or is it a general feature in international cooperation? In this
section, I place the European experience in a comparative perspective and consider secondary
evidence from three institutional contexts: the CSCE/OSCE, the GATT/WTO, and UN
environmental conferences. These cases are drawn from a broader inventory of chairmanship
arrangements in international cooperation, summarized in Table 1. Each of the selected
negotiation contexts conforms to one of the alternative ways of organizing the chairmanship –
rotation between states, appointment of supranational official, and election of state
representative. This allows us to test the hypothesis that institutional design shapes the discretion
33
and influence of negotiation chairs. More specifically, we would expect rotation to fuel dynamics
of diffuse reciprocity, and the other two models to involve more pronounced concerns with
control and less discretion for chairmen to influence the distributional dimension of negotiated
agreements.
TABLE 1. Chairmanship Arrangements in International Cooperation
Organization
Rotation between
states
APEC
Economic Leaders
Ministerial Meetings
Senior Officials
(one year)
ASEAN
Summit
Ministerial Meetings
Standing Committee
(one year)
AU
Assembly 2
Executive Council 2
Perm. Rep. Committee 2
(one year)
Council
of Europe
Committee of Ministers
Ministers’ Deputies
(six months)
EFTA
Council
(six months)
EU
European Council
Council of Ministers
Committees & Groups
(six months)
G8
Summit
(one year)
Election of state
representative
IAEA
General Conference 2
(duration of meeting)
Board of Governors
(one year)
IMF
Board of Governors
(time unspecified)
NATO
Ministerial Meetings
(one year)
Appointment of
supranational official
Executive Board
(managing director)
North Atlantic Council
Defence Planning Committee
(secretary general)
34
Nordic Council
of Ministers
Council of Ministers
(one year)
OECD
Ministerial Meetings
(one year)
Council
(secretary general)
World Bank
Board of Governors
(time unspecified)
Board of Executive Directors
(president)
WTO
Ministerial Conferences
(duration of meeting)
General Council 1
Committees & Bodies 3
(one year)
Trade Negotiations Committee
(director general)
OSCE
UN
Ministerial Council
Permanent Council
(one year)
Security Council
(one month)
General Assembly 1 2
Main Committees 3
(one year)
UNEP
Governing Council 1 2
(duration of meeting)
Committee of Perm. Rep.
(one-two years)
UNFCCC
Conference of the Parties 1 2
(one year)
1
Geographical rotation of right to nominate candidate for election prescribed in treaty, rules of procedure or equivalent
document.
2
Geographical balance in the composition of the bureau or presidium prescribed in treaty, rules of procedure or
equivalent document.
3
Geographical division of chairmanships prescribed in treaty, rules of procedure or equivalent document.
The comparison reveals that the European experience is not exceptional. In all three
negotiation contexts, formal leaders have been delegated central process functions and influenced
negotiated outcomes. Yet the kind of powers the chairmanship has been equipped with and the
form of influence formal leaders have exerted vary across the three cases. States have not
adopted a standardized model for the responsibilities conferred on formal leaders in international
cooperation, but tailored the office to match specific functional needs. Furthermore, the evidence
confirms that alternative design principles yield variation in distributional influence. Where
35
states institute rotating chairmanships, they grant relatively more discretion to negotiation chairs
than when they elect a chairman from one of the parties or empower a supranational official.
The CSCE/OSCE. The development of cooperation in the CSCE/OSCE illustrates how
functional demands may shift over time, with observable consequences in the powers delegated
to formal leaders. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was first convened in
1973 and functioned until 1989 as a central forum for East-West dialogue. Curiously, the formal
negotiation machinery, involving daily rotation of the chairmanship, was so ineffective that the
negotiations in practice took place in informal sessions chaired by the neutral and non-aligned
states, enjoying both agenda-management and brokerage responsibilities. 36 Whereas the general
conference themes were decided in pre-negotiations between the United States and the Soviet
Union, the neutral countries were given the difficult task of reconciling the superpowers’
competing priorities in the working programs and meeting agendas. Furthermore, the extreme
level of distrust between the two camps created a strong demand for third-party brokerage, which
the neutral countries provided at each of the CSCE conferences, except for of the Belgrade
meeting in 1977-1978. By contrast, there was no identifiable need for representation vis-à-vis
other bodies in this loosely institutionalized process of détente.
The end of the Cold War fundamentally changed the preconditions for cooperation, the
ambitions of the regime, and the demand for formal leadership. The CSCE was transformed into
a proper international organization, the OSCE, at the center of which the member states placed
the annually rotating Chairman-in-office (CiO), “vested with overall responsibility for executive
action and co-ordination of current OSCE activities.” 37 Since its creation, the office of the CiO
has been delegated increasingly extensive responsibilities of agenda management, brokerage, and
36
Sizoo and Jurrjens 1984; Neuhold 1987; Ghebali 1989; Heraclides 1993.
37
OSCE 2000. See also Stefan-Bastl 2001; Bakker 2002; Ghebali 2001.
36
representation, in response to functional needs in the new regime: “[The powers of the
chairmanship] have developed in a pragmatic and creative way in parallel to the dramatic
expansion of the OSCE’s operational activities and the necessities of current action related to the
Organization’s increased responsibilities.” 38 Brokerage remains important, but the real growth
areas are agenda management and representation, where the chairmanship nowadays enjoys
powers that match or even surpass those of the EU Presidency. Each incoming CiO presents a
political program that assigns priority to the wealth of issues on the OSCE’s policy agenda and
for which the chairmanship carries the main executive responsibility. As the member states’
internal and external representative, the CiO issues instructions to the OSCE’s missions in
conflict-laden regions, engages in crisis-management diplomacy, and speaks on behalf of the
organization in relation to governments and international organizations.
Existing literature testifies that the services provided by negotiation chairs in both the
CSCE and the OSCE have raised the efficiency of interstate bargaining and facilitated regime
cooperation. The evidence on distributional effects reveals variation over time, however, with
formal leaders affecting outcomes to a far lesser extent in the CSCE than in the OSCE. The
discretion of the neutral states in the CSCE was strongly limited by the diverging preferences of
the two superpowers and the requirement of consensus. Furthermore, the US and the Soviet
Union effectively engaged in ex ante control when selecting the neutral states as negotiation
chairs. As opposed to members of the two competing blocs, the neutral states tended to hold
preferences in the mid-range of the spectrum, and therefore had few incentives to seek outcomes
that would systematically disfavor either the East or the West. The overarching interest of these
states in the process of détente was to keep it alive, by producing results sufficient for the US and
the Soviet Union to remain involved.
38
Ghebali 2001, 201.
37
In the OSCE, by contrast, independent executive powers grant the member state at the helm
extensive discretion in agenda management and representation. The CiO prioritizes among
competing political concerns, when selecting policy issues to include in its political program for
the twelve months in office. Similarly, the CiO shapes OSCE policy in its function as
representative, when issuing public statements and mission directives that do not necessarily
reflect consensus among the organization’s members. The rotation of governments at the helm
makes this distributional influence broadly acceptable to the parties, even if Russia considers
itself a victim of the attention accorded to human rights issues by consecutive Western
chairmanships.
The GATT/WTO. In the GATT/WTO, negotiation chairs have been delegated basic agenda
management tasks and extensive brokerage responsibilities, but no powers of representation,
reflecting varying functional needs. The large number of parties, the high level of issue conflict,
and the consensus rule generally have created a strong demand for third-party intervention.
During the last four trade rounds, the parties have drawn on the brokerage services of the
supranational chairman of the Trade Negotiation Committee (TNC) – the director general of the
GATT/WTO Secretariat. The TNC functions as the central coordinating body of global trade
rounds, and the horizontal perspective of this organ makes its chairman well placed to function as
package-deal engineer. The demand for an agenda manager that can help settle conflicts over
priorities has traditionally been limited by the practice of the US and the EU to engage in prenegotiations that establish the topics of a trade round and define the mandates of negotiating
groups. Yet once these issues have been settled, the participating states rely on GATT/WTO
chairmen to prepare the agendas of the specialized groups and committees. The large number of
competing proposals easily produces overloaded agendas, even if the parties tend to group
themselves in coalitions. GATT/WTO chairmen possess certain reporting requirements within
38
the internal negotiation machinery, but these do not comprise an authority to represent others and
negotiate on their behalf.
Accounts of trade negotiations from the Kennedy Round in the 1960s to the Doha Round in
the 2000s paint a very similar picture of the influence exerted by formal leaders. 39 With the
exception of the Tokyo Round, brokerage by the TNC chairman has been pivotal in stitching
together package agreements that can secure unanimous adoption by the parties. The director
general has made effective use of the privileged resources of the chairmanship, calling informal
negotiation sessions in the so-called Green Room, conducting bilateral talks to unveil bottom
lines, and developing single negotiating texts. The most frequently cited example is the
contribution of Arthur Dunkel, who chaired the TNC during the Uruguay Round and drafted the
text that eventually formed the backbone of the final act. By contrast, existing accounts do not
provide any evidence of systematic influence on the distributional dimension of these trade
agreements. The combination of the consensus principle and substantive preference cleavages
between the two main parties has reduced the zone of agreement and the discretion of negotiation
chairs. Furthermore, existing literature indicates that the TNC chairman’s over-arching objective
more often has concerned process – keeping the trade negotiations on track – than substance –
the specific provisions in individual dossiers.
UN environmental conferences. Three of the most comprehensive and well-documented
environmental negotiations over the last three decades are the UN sponsored conferences on the
law of the sea (1973-1982), the ozone convention and protocol (1982-1987), and the climate
change convention (1991-1992). 40 In all three cases, the conferences were led by elected
39
On the Kennedy Round, see Preeg 1970; Winham 1979. On the Tokyo Round, see Winham 1986. On the Uruguay
Round, see Sjöstedt 1994; Underdal 1994; Hampson with Hart 1995, chs. 7-8. On the Doha Round, see Odell 2005.
40
On the law of the sea negotiations, see Sebenius 1984; Koh and Jayakumar 1985; Antrim and Sebenius 1992;
Rubin 1993. On the ozone negotiations, see Benedick 1991, chs. 6-7; Széll 1993; Hampson with Hart 1995, ch. 9;
39
chairmen drawn from the participating states, who typically were granted important authority in
agenda management and brokerage, but not representation. The combination of broad conference
mandates and equal agenda-setting rights produced overcrowded negotiation agendas, leading the
parties to endow formal leaders with the power to formulate single negotiating texts. Similarly,
the large number of parties, the broad spectrum of preferences, and the requirement of consensus
produced a distinct demand for brokerage. By contrast, the organization of these multilateral
conferences did not create a functional demand for internal or external representation.
The conferral of powers on the chairmanship was gradual, reflecting the parties’ increasing
awareness of the collective-action problems involved in large-scale multilateral bargaining. In
the law of the sea negotiations, the participating states only delegated the power to produce a
single negotiating text once it had become exceedingly clear that no meaningful negotiation
activity could be conducted based on the countless competing proposals on the table. This first
act of delegation was subsequently followed by the conferral of authority to conduct confidential
consultations, present revised versions of the draft text, and construct a comprehensive package
agreement. The climate change negotiations display a remarkably similar pattern. Following
extensive initial disagreements between developed and developing countries, the parties
empowered the co-chairmen of the two working groups to develop single negotiating texts. Yet
progress remained slow and the participating states subsequently authorized the conference
chairman to develop a full compromise text, which formed the backbone of the convention
eventually adopted.
As regards the influence of formal leaders, existing accounts testify to positive effects on
the efficiency of the negotiations, while offering little evidence of a systematic impact on
distributional outcomes. Formal leaders created structural negotiation conditions conducive for
Tolba 1998, ch. 5. On the climate change negotiations, see Benedick 1993; Mintzer and Leonard 1994; Hampson
with Hart 1995, ch. 11.
40
concessions, encouraged the parties to unveil their bottom lines in confidential talks, formulated
single negotiating texts, discovered issue-linkages, and engineered package agreements. The
contributions of conference chairmen Tommy Koh in the law of the sea negotiations and Jean
Ripert in the climate change negotiations are broadly recognized in the literature. In the ozone
negotiations, agenda management and brokerage were supplied jointly by the chairmanship and
the UNEP executive director Mustafa Tolba. Yet the same unfavorable conditions that created a
demand for brokerage – divergent preferences and the consensus requirement – reduced the
discretion of formal leaders as well. Merely identifying a zone of agreement posed a challenge,
and the possibility to select one efficient outcome rather than another seldom existed. In addition,
the principle of election offered an effective instrument of ex ante control that limited the
likelihood of exploitation. Typically, the overall conference chairman was selected from a
country with weak and/or central preferences in the negotiations. As Winfried Lang, who chaired
the conference on the ozone protocol, testifies: “A person is unlikely to be elected to the
presidency of a conference if the government he or she represents adopts partisan views not
shared by the majority or certain key players.” 41 Moreover, the chairmanships of the subsidiary
bodies were either distributed to ensure regional power balance, or divided between two cochairs that represented alternative interest constellations. In this respect, these environmental
conferences illustrate a general pattern, confirmed in Table 1: where states opt for the model of
chairmen drawn from the negotiating parties, they tend to institute formal mechanisms of power
division between competing geographical groupings or interest communities.
Conclusion
41
Lang 1994, 209.
41
The chairmanship is a generic feature of political decision-making, whether at local, national or
international level. In city councils, parliamentary committees, and multilateral institutions,
chairmen facilitate and influence decision-making by managing the agenda, brokering agreement,
and representing the decision body vis-à-vis external parties. In many cases, the office of the
chairmanship is itself an object of contention. Political parties compete for the formal control of
legislative committees, and states struggle over the right to appoint the chairmen of international
conferences and organizations. Yet, so far, political scientists have been slow to ask and answer
the kind of questions motivated by these observations.
My ambition in this paper has been to demonstrate that formal leadership carries
implications for our understanding of international cooperation that we cannot afford to neglect.
Drawing on rational choice institutionalism, I have introduced a theory that generates testable
hypotheses about the delegation of process powers to the chairmanship, the power resources of
formal leaders, and the influence of negotiation chairs over outcomes. Summarizing extensive
evidence from negotiations in the EU, and as well as experiences from security, trade, and
environmental negotiations, I have found support for an understanding of the chairmanship as a
power platform in multilateral bargaining. I conclude by outlining three sets of implications.
First, my results speak to the debate in IR about leadership, efficiency, and distribution in
multilateral negotiations, endorsing basic assumptions of the informal leadership perspective, but
challenging its agnostic approach toward the identity of leaders or entrepreneurs. This paper
grants support to the notion that bargaining impediments and transaction costs are normal and
ever-present ingredients of the negotiation process, creating a demand for political leadership. It
claims that we cannot understand the delegation of agenda-management, brokerage, and
representation functions to chairmanship institutions, unless we recognize the collective-action
problems that motivate states to empower formal leaders. Empirically, it shows how states, in the
42
EU and elsewhere, turn to negotiation chairs for help, when confronted with overloaded agendas,
deadlocked negotiations, and an absence of institutional formulas for representation.
The fundamental difference between my argument and previous analyses of leadership is
the privileging of formal, rather than informal, sources of influence. Whereas existing accounts
anchor political leadership in structural power, entrepreneurial capacity or intellectual capital,
this paper highlights the platform provided by the formal position of the chairmanship. Access to
the chairmanship grants actors informational and procedural advantages they otherwise would
not have possessed, permitting them to influence outcomes in ways they otherwise would not
have done. While it may be true that many types of actors can engage in political leadership, this
paper generates the expectation that negotiation chairs will feature particularly prominently in
analyses of successful multilateral bargaining. Furthermore, it predicts that formal leadership will
influence the distributional dimension of negotiated agreements, shifting outcomes away from
the equilibria expected by traditional bargaining theory, especially where states institute and
empower rotating chairmanships.
The second set of implications pertains specifically to EU politics. The paper’s empirical
argument about the Presidency speaks to the long-running debate in EU studies about the relative
influence of supranational institutions and national governments. 42 Lending support to an
intergovernmentalist analysis of European integration, it specifies the most central institutional
mechanism through which EU governments reach efficient bargains without supranational
intervention. Through the rotating Presidency, governments take turns in providing the
efficiency-enhancing functions of agenda management, brokerage, and representation, leaving
limited demand for supranational entrepreneurship. The historical record demonstrates that
European governments have developed the Presidency in order to address collective-action
problems in EU cooperation, generally at the expense of the Commission. Furthermore, analyses
42
E.g., Sandholtz and Zysman 1989; Garrett and Weingast 1993; Moravcsik 1998.
43
of interstate negotiations, other than the case studies summarized here, testify to pivotal
contributions by Presidencies – observations that so far have not been integrated into a
theoretically coherent argument about formal leadership. 43
This paper also suggests that Presidencies’ distributional influence generates knock-on
effects for the policy mix at the European level. The rotation of the Presidency between states
with different preference orderings promotes a broader combination of policy than would have
been the case under alternative chairmanship models, though at the expense of continuity. 44 In
the EU’s relations to neighboring regions, for instance, Southern European Presidencies
consistently promote cooperation in the Mediterranean, whereas Nordic Presidencies develop
policy for the Baltic Sea region. By the same token, EU member states to varying degrees use
their periods at the helm to initiate and push forward cooperation on social regulation and
economic liberalization, as well as internal institutional reform and enlargement of the Union,
thus furthering a parallel – if somewhat irregular – advancement of policy across several fronts.
Third and finally, this paper opens up a new agenda of research on formal leadership.
Several questions amenable to empirical inquiry have been left unanswered. The variation in the
design of the chairmanship across multilateral conferences and international organizations,
illustrated in Table 1, is one such issue. Why do states in some cases choose rotation
arrangements, while opting for supranational chairmen or elected state representatives in other
cases? Another outstanding question pertains to the choice between alternative leaders in
international negotiations. Why do states in many cases rely on formal leaders to provide agenda
management, brokerage, and representation, while turning to individual states, coalitions of
states, international secretariats, or even private individuals, in other cases?
43
See, e.g., Moravcsik 1998, ch. 6; Moravcsik and Nicolaïdis 1999; Svensson 2000; Dür and Mateo 2004.
44
See also Kollman 2003; Elgström 2003.
44
Theoretically, the rationalist argument I advance invites competing interpretations of
formal leadership. Even if existing literature does not offer coherent alternative accounts,
sociological institutionalism presents general theoretical claims that may be disaggregated into
specified hypotheses. 45 Challenging rationalist arguments about institutional development,
sociological institutionalists would expect emulation of legitimate organizational models to play
a more central role than functional efficiency in the design of chairmanship offices, and
stickiness rather than adaptation to characterize the evolution of chairmanship offices over time.
Furthermore, sociological institutionalists would point to alternative power resources, such as the
legitimacy of the office, the trust acquired in previous interaction, and the capacity to persuade
others through the better argument. Finally, sociological institutionalists would assume informal
norms of appropriate behavior – such as the expectation on “honest brokerage” – to heavily
shape the exercise of formal leadership, challenging the primacy of strategic gains calculations
and formal rules in rationalist analysis. Formal leadership, in conclusion, offers ample
opportunities for theoretical contestation and further empirical exploration.
45
DiMaggio and Powell 1983; March and Olsen 1998; Risse 2000.
45
References
Antrim, Lance N. and James K. Sebenius (1992) Formal Individual Mediation and the
Negotiators’ Dilemma: Tommy Koh at the Law of the Sea Conference. In Mediation in
International Relations: Multiple Approaches to Conflict Management, edited by Jacob
Bercovitch and Jeffrey Z. Rubin, 97-130. Houndmills: Macmillan.
Bakker, Edwin (2002) International Challenge for the Netherlands: The OSCE Chairmanship-inOffice in 2003. Helsinki Monitor 13 (2): 216-220.
Baron, David P. (1994) A Sequential Choice Theory Perspective on Legislative Organization.
Legislative Studies Quarterly 19 (2): 267-296.
Benedick, Richard Elliot (1991) Ozone Diplomacy. New Directions in Safeguarding the Planet.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Benedick, Richard Elliot (1993) Perspectives of a Negotiation Practitioner. In International
Environmental Negotiation, edited by Gunnar Sjöstedt, 219-243. Newbury Park, Cal.:
Sage.
DiMaggio, Paul J. and Walter W. Powell (1983) The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional
Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields. American Sociological
Review 48: 147-160.
Dupont, Christophe (1994) Coalition Theory: Using Power to Build Cooperation. In
International Multilateral Negotiations, edited by I. William Zartman, 148-177. San
Francisco, Cal.: Jossey-Bass.
Dür, Andreas and Gemma Mateo (2004) Treaty-Making in the European Union: Bargaining,
Issue Linkages, and Efficiency. European Integration Online Papers 8: 18.
Elgström, Ole (ed.) (2003) European Union Council Presidencies: A Comparative Analysis.
London: Routledge.
Evans, Peter B., Harold K. Jacobson, and Robert D. Putnam (eds.) (1993) Double-Edged
Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Fiorina, Morris P. and Kenneth A. Shepsle (1989) Formal Theories of Leadership: Agents,
Agenda Setters, and Entrepreneurs. In Leadership and Politics: New Perspectives in
Political Science, edited by Bryan D. Jones, 17-40. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Frohlich, Norman, Joe A. Oppenheimer, and Oran R. Young (1971) Political Leadership and
Collective Goods. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Garrett, Geoffrey and Barry R. Weingast (1993) Ideas, Interests, and Institutions: Constructing
the European Community’s Internal Market. In Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs,
Institutions, and Political Change, edited by Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, 173206. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Ghebali, Victor-Yves (1989) La Diplomatie de la Détente: La CSCE, d’Helsinki à Vienne (19731989). Bruxelles: Bruylant.
Ghebali, Victor-Yves (2001) Is the OSCE Chairmanship Still a Relevant Institution? Helsinki
Monitor 13 (3): 201-203.
Hampson, Fen Osler with Michael Hart (1995) Multilateral Negotiations. Lessons from Arms
Control, Trade, and the Environment. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hayes-Renshaw, Fiona and Helen Wallace. 1997. The Council of Ministers. London: Macmillan.
Heraclides, Alexis (1993) Security and Co-operation in Europe: The Human Dimension 19721992. London: Frank Cass.
Jönsson, Christer (2002) Diplomacy, Bargaining and Negotiation. In Handbook of International
Relations, edited by Walter Carlsnaes, Thomas Risse, and Beth A. Simmons, 212-234.
London: Sage.
46
Keohane, Robert O. (1984) After Hegemony. Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press.
Kiewiet, D. Roderick and Mathew D. McCubbins (1991) The Logic of Delegation:
Congressional Parties and the Appropriations Process. Chicago, Ill.: The University of
Chicago Press.
Koh, Tommy T. B. and Shanmugam Jayakumar (1985) The Negotiating Process of the Third
United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. In United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea 1982: A Commentary. Volume 1, edited by Myron H. Nordquist, 29-134.
University of Virginia: Center for Oceans Law and Policy.
Kollman, Ken (2003) The Rotating Presidency of the European Council as a Search for Good
Policies. European Union Politics 4 (1): 51-74.
Krasner, Stephen D. (1991) Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto
Frontier. World Politics 43 (3): 336-366.
Kremenyuk, Victor A. (ed.) (2002) International Negotiation: Analysis, Approaches, Issues. 2nd
ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Lang, Winfried (1989) Multilateral Negotiations: The Role of Presiding Officers. In Processes of
International Negotiations, edited by Frances Mautner-Markhof, 23-42. Boulder, Col.:
Westview Press.
Lang, Winfried (1994) Lessons Drawn from Practice: Open Covenants, Openly Arrived at. In
International Multilateral Negotiations, edited by I. William Zartman, 201-212. San
Francisco, Cal.: Jossey-Bass.
Lax, David A. and James K. Sebenius (1986) The Manager as Negotiator. New York: The Free
press.
Luce, R. Duncan and Howard Raiffa (1957) Games and Decisions. New York, N.J.: Wiley.
Malnes, Raino (1995) ‘Leader’ and ‘Entrepreneur’ in International Negotiations: A Conceptual
Analysis. European Journal of International Relations 1 (1): 87-112.
March, James G. and Johan P. Olsen (1998) The Institutional Dynamics of International Political
Orders. International Organization 52 (4): 943-969.
McKelvey, Richard (1976) Intransitivities in Multidimensional Voting Models and Some
Implications for Agenda Control. Journal of Economic Theory 12: 472-482.
Mesquita, Bruce Bueno de (1990) Multilateral Negotiations: A Spatial Analysis of the ArabIsraeli Dispute. International Organization 44 (3): 317-340.
Metcalfe, David (1998) Leadership in European Union Negotiations: The Presidency of the
Council. International Negotiation 3 (3): 413-434.
Meunier, Sophie (2000) What Single Voice? European Institutions and EU-U.S. Trade
Negotiations. International Organization, 54 (1): 103-135.
Miller, Gary J. (1992) Managerial Dilemmas: The Political Economy of Hierarchy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Mintzer, Irving M. and J. A. Leonard (eds.) (1994) Negotiating Climate Change: The Inside
Story of the Rio Convention. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mnookin, Robert H. and Susskind, Lawrence E. (eds.) (1999) Negotiating on Behalf of Others:
Advice to Lawyers, Business Executives, Sports Agents, Diplomats, Politicians, and
Everybody Else. Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage.
Moravcsik, Andrew (1998) The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from
Messina to Maastricht. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
Moravcsik, Andrew (1999) A New Statecraft? Supranational Entrepreneurs and International
Cooperation. International Organization 53 (2): 267-306.
Moravcsik, Andrew and Kalypso Nicolaïdis (1999) Explaining the Amsterdam Treaty: Interests,
Influence, Institutions. Journal of Common Market Studies 37 (1): 59-85.
Nash, John F. (1950) The Bargaining Problem. Econometrica 18: 155-162.
47
Neuhold, Hanspeter (ed.) (1987b) CSCE: N + N Perspectives. The Process of the Conference on
Security and Co-peration in Europe from the Viewpoint of the Neutral and Non-Aligned
Participating States. Laxenburg: Austrian Institute for International Affairs.
Nicolaïdis, Kalypso (1999) Minimizing Agency Costs in Two-Level Games: Lessons from the
Trade Authority Controversies in the United States and the European Union. In Negotiating
on Behalf of Others: Advice to Lawyers, Business Executives, Sports Agents, Diplomats,
Politicians, and Everybody Else, edited by Robert M. Mnookin and Lawrence E. Susskind,
87-126. Thousand Oaks, Cal.: Sage.
Odell, John (2005) Chairing a WTO Negotiation. Journal of International Economic Law 8 (2):
425-448.
OSCE (2000) OSCE Handbook. Vienna: Secretariat of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Pollack, Mark A. (2003) The Engines of European Integration: Delegation, Agency, and Agenda
Setting in the EU. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Preeg, Ernest H. (1970) Traders and Diplomats: An Analysis of the Kennedy Round of
Negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Washington D.C.:
Brookings Institution.
Raiffa, Howard (1982) The Art and Science of Negotiation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Riker, William (1980) Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of
Institutions. American Political Science Review 74: 432-446.
Risse, Thomas (2000) “Let’s Argue!”: Communicative Action in World Politics. International
Organization 54 (1): 1-39.
Rubin, Jeffrey Z. (1993) Third-Party Roles: Mediation in International Environmental Disputes.
In International Environmental Negotiation, edited by Gunnar Sjöstedt, 275-290. Newbury
Park, Cal.: Sage.
Sandholtz, Wayne and John Zysman (1989) 1992: Recasting the European Bargain. World
Politics 42 (1): 95-128.
Scharpf, Fritz W. (1997) Games Real Actors Play. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
Schelling, Thomas C. (1960) The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Sebenius, James K. (1983) Negotiation Arithmetic: Adding and Subtracting Issues and Parties.
International Organization 37: 281-316.
Sebenius, James K. (1984) Negotiating the Law of the Sea. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Shepsle, Kenneth A. (1979) Institutional Arrangements and Equilibrium in Multi-Dimensional
Voting Models. American Journal of Political Science 23: 27-60.
Shepsle, Kenneth A. and Barry R. Weingast (1984) Uncovered Sets and Sophisticated Voting
Outcomes with Implications for Agenda Institutions. American Journal of Political Science
28: 49-74.
Sizoo, Jan and Rudolf Jurrjens (1984) CSCE Decision-Making: The Madrid Experience. The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
Sjöstedt, Gunnar (1994) Negotiating the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs
and Trade. In International Multilateral Negotiation. Approaches to the Management of
Complexity, edited by I. William Zartman, 44-69. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Sjöstedt, Gunnar (1999) Leadership in Multilateral Negotiations: Crisis or Transition? In
International Negotiation, edited by Peter Berton, Hiroshi Kimura and I. William Zartman.
New York: St Martin’s Press.
Stefan-Bastl, Jutta (2001) The Austrian OSCE Chairmanship. Assessment and Outlook. Helsinki
Monitor 12 (4): 257-271.
48
Stein, Janice Gross (ed.) (1989) Getting to the Table: The Processes of International
Prenegotiation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Svensson, Anna-Carin (2000) In the Service of the European Union: The Role of the Presidency
in Negotiating the Amsterdam Treaty 1995-1997. Ph.D dissertation, Department of
Government, Uppsala University.
Széll, Patrick (1993) Negotiations on the Ozone Layer. In International Environmental
Negotiation, edited by Gunnar Sjöstedt, 31-48. Newbury Park, Cal.: Sage.
Tallberg, Jonas (2003) The Agenda-Shaping Powers of the EU Council Presidency. Journal of
European Public Policy 10 (1): 1-19.
Tallberg, Jonas (2004) The Power of the Presidency: Brokerage, Efficiency, and Distribution in
EU Negotiations. Journal of Common Market Studies 42 (5): 999-1022.
Tallberg, Jonas (2006) Leadership and Negotiation in the European Union. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Three Wise Men (1979) Report on European Institutions. Report presented by the Committee of
the Three to the European Council, Brussels, October 1979.
Tolba, Mostafa K. (1998) Global Environmental Diplomacy. Negotiating Environmental
Agreements for the World 1973-1992. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
Touval, Saadia (1989) Multilateral Negotiation: An Analytical Approach. Negotiation Journal 5
(2): 159-73.
Tsebelis, George (1990) Nested Games. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press.
Tsebelis, George (2002) Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press.
Underdal, Arild (1994) Leadership Theory: Rediscovering the Arts of Management. In
International Multilateral Negotiation, edited by I. William Zartman, 178-197.
Wall, James A. and Ann Lynn (1993) Mediation: A Current Overview. Journal of Conflict
Resolution 37 (1): 160-194.
Wallace, Helen (1985) The Presidency of the Council of Ministers of the European Community:
Tasks and Evolution. In The Presidency of the European Council of Ministers: Impacts and
Implications for National Governments, edited by Colm O Nuallain, 1-22. London: Croom
Helm.
Walton, Richard E. and Robert B. McKersie (1965) A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations.
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Westlake, Martin (1999) The Council of the European Union. 2nd rev. ed. London: John Harper
Publishing.
Winham, Gilbert R. (1977) Negotiation as a Management Process. World Politics 30 (1): 87-114.
Winham, Gilbert R. (1979) The Meditation of Multilateral Negotiations. Journal of World Trade
Law 13 (3): 193-208.
Winham, Gilbert R. (1986) International Trade and the Tokyo Round Negotiation. Princeton,
N.Y.: Princeton University Press.
Young, H. Peyton (ed.) (1991) Negotiation Analysis. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan
Press.
Young, Oran R. (1991) Political Leadership and Regime Formation: On the Development of
Institutions in International Society. International Organization 45 (3): 281-308.
Young, Oran R. (1999) Comment on Andrew Moravcsik, “A New Statecraft? Supranational
Entrepreneurs and International Cooperation.” International Organization 53 (4): 805-809.
Zartman, I. William (1994a) Two’s Company and More’s a Crowd: The Complexities of
Multilateral Negotiation. In International Multilateral Negotiations, edited by I. William
Zartman, 1-10. San Francisco, Cal.: Jossey-Bass.
Zartman, I. William (ed.) (1994b) International Multilateral Negotiations. San Francisco, Cal.:
Jossey-Bass.
49